We do more unschooling and then have put together a variety of different curriculums and resources to suit each child's needs. We have never used Classical Conversations.
We've tried using ACE, but it wasn't right for the child we tried it on, and it was a lot of book work / make work for very little result. It would probably work well for another child, but we dumped it and moved on to something else. I also didn't like how we couldn't reuse much of it for other children.
For our two high school age children, we have them doing something different. They both have maths to do, one does Life of Fred, and one does Math-u-see with a weekly meeting with a tutor (his grandmother). Then they both have a book to read that week. Sometimes it's the same book and they share, sometimes it's a different book. It might be a book or a section of a book of the bible. Or it's something based on history, or fiction, or science or whatever. We introduce a lot of topics here.
When they have finished reading the book they have to submit a report to us in some way. Sometimes it's a written book report, sometimes they make a movie, sometimes they produce something from the book (eg, a cake from a recipe book, or a toasting fork from '100 things a boy can make'), sometimes they give a speech. The point is that they can show us that they understood the concepts we were trying to teach through the book they were given.
Wednesdays we join together with Samuel's sister and all the children do science, music, and art.
The middle children do a mixture of Reading eggs, reading, Life of Fred, writing etc.
The younger children have their own worksheets to do based on phonics. They also do reading with me, writing, and Reading Eggs and Mathseeds.
We like to have plenty of time for unschooling. I can't even really explain to you what this would be as it's just taking opportunities when they arrive. Like, Samuel might take a child to the supermarket, and that doesn't seem like school, but he sends them to find the cheapest packet of chips, and they have to learn what is the cheapest by weight and then how advertising works etc. So it becomes real life learning.
Or, maybe Gramps needs help on the farm today and the children are learning how to plan when to introduce the rams to the ewes or how to shift ewes and lambs or how to fix a fence etc.
For the next few weeks we are going to spend a lot of time watching the olympics. For example, in 2 days there will be canoe slalom on. When on earth do they get to see that?! This is school, even when it's not book work, it's introducing these events, understanding they could do these when they're older if they want to, and seeing diversity out there. And it's geography, learning about different countries, flags, people, etc. So yeah, it might look like sitting in front of a screen, but it's more.
And some days when I'm sick or the kids are sick, all we do is sit in front of the computer and watch documentaries. The kids LOVE this! Sometimes it's nature documentaries, and sometimes it's how to train a dog or extreme cake bakers or whatever. It's all learning, and that's what's important.
